


Instant Crush

by bonn



Series: run, run, run, [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bisexual Sokka (Avatar), Gay Zuko (Avatar), M/M, i looked at chan n said is anyone gonna flesh out this character? and then didnt wait for a response, if you're reading this hoping for a more decisive ending than contact high. lower your expectations, this fic brought to you by me being banned from cheering for india in the boxing day test
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28003842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonn/pseuds/bonn
Summary: He wanted to dream. Suki said dreams showed you who you were inside, helped your heart tell your brain what it wanted. She’d said that when she said they shouldn’t go out anymore. “Do you dream of me?” she’d asked, gently.Sokka didn’t dream of anyone, and he thought about telling her that.“No.”And her smile wasn’t sad.-aka: sokka's feelings are a little more complicated than he'd like(Contact High: part 2)
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: run, run, run, [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051064
Comments: 22
Kudos: 160





	Instant Crush

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to contact high 2. contact higher. 2 contact 2 high. contact high 2 the streets. contact high returns. contact high 2: electric boogaloo. contact high here we go again. contact high 2049. contact high: the squeakuel.
> 
> welcome to instant crush.

Sokka couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a dream. One that stayed with him when he woke, anyway. Sometimes he woke up so tired that he thought there must have been _something_ going on in his head, but none of it was accessible to him. And maybe that was better, because he saw the haunted look in Katara’s eyes the morning after she had one of her nightmares, and it was awful.

He didn’t dream. He wasn’t sure he didn’t die every night, resurrect every morning.

He wanted to dream. Suki said dreams showed you who you were inside, helped your heart tell your brain what it wanted. She’d said that when she said they shouldn’t go out anymore. “Do you dream of me?” she’d asked, gently.

Sokka didn’t dream of anyone, and he thought about telling her that.

“No.”

And her smile wasn’t sad.

Sokka didn’t dream, so he had no idea what his heart wanted.

He was halfway through his cold war history review when Katara knocked softly on his doorframe.

“Aang’s at the skatepark.”

Sokka shut his laptop. “You want me to drive you?”

Katara winced.

“No sweat. So you want me to walk you?”

“Do you mind?”

Sokka shook his head. “Just let me put on shoes and text Suki.”

She sat down on his bed and started stripping the pillowcases from his pillows. 

“You’re annoying,” he told her as he fished a sneaker from under his desk. “Is my phone over there?”

“Ummm…” she said as she looked around. “Yeah. You have a missed call from Zuko.”

Sokka’s stomach clenched. “I’ll call him later.”

Katara shot him a look. “Look at you, setting boundaries.”

Sokka didn’t say anything, just finished lacing his shoes. He held out his hands, and Katara tossed him the phone. He sent a quick text – _hey we’re heading to the skatepark what u up to? –_ and put it in his back pocket. “Alright. Ready?”

The skatepark was a direct shot down Main Street, and if you went that way, it was a three minute drive. Twenty minute walk. They didn’t go that way. They went the long way, down quiet streets, through leafy alleyways. They didn’t say much, because Sokka wasn’t there for conversation. He was there so that Katara wasn’t alone, which was fine. He was happy to oblige.

When they reached the last corner before the skatepark, Sokka stopped walking. It took Katara a few more steps to realise he wasn’t still with her, and she backtracked to give him her signature _look_.

He checked his phone, but there was no text from Suki. She was probably teaching one of her Kyoshi classes, which he should have remembered, but his head had been kind of all over the place lately.

“What is it?” Katara asked, putting a hand on his elbow.

“Um, I don’t – I don’t really feel like seeing Aang right now. Are you gonna be okay if I leave?”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. I’m sure he’ll walk me home if I ask. You won’t come say hi?”

Sokka shook his head, taking a step backwards. Katara’s gaze was full of concern and understanding, and he loved her so, so much. He hugged her tight, then watched her go around the corner, listened for her shriek as she called out to Aang.

He called Zuko.

“Sokka?”

“I only just saw you called,” Sokka lied. “What’s up?”

He hated it the moment he hung up the call, hated it when he got home and told Gran Gran he was going for a drive, hated it when he pulled up in front of the Jasmine Dragon. He needed to get away, get away from roads and houses and people and noise. He _wanted_ to drive out into the desert or the forest or the ocean and he wanted to do it alone, but he was switched on enough to know that that was a bad idea. Not that he thought he’d do anything bad, but he thought he might get lost out there in the wild if he didn’t have someone else to read the map.

Zuko climbed into the car with a smile on his face that felt extremely out of place. Usually Sokka liked Zuko’s smile – a delicate thing, hard-won – but this wasn’t that smile. This was _something has changed and I don’t know where we stand anymore_. Sokka was almost sure his smile was exactly the same.

“Where are we going?”

“Thought we’d just take off and see where we end up.”

Zuko gave him a look like that wasn’t a real answer, but he didn’t say anything. Zuko never said anything if it went against what Sokka wanted, and it drove him crazy. Like, _be a person_ , he thought. Be a fucking person for once.

That was unfair. He didn’t really think that, and it wasn’t even true, not really. He was just having a bad day. Week. Month. Decade.

He drove in silence and Zuko rode in silence. He looked at Zuko and he thought – _would I dream of you? If I could, would it be you? Is it you?_

He was scared that it was, and he was scared that it wasn’t.

The sea was bleak and calm when they arrived, and they sat in the cold sand and dug their toes down, down.

When they first moved down here, when it was summer and Dad was always working and Katara couldn’t get into the car without shaking, the two of them rode their bikes through back alleys and down isolated roads and across the dunes. You couldn’t do that now, Sokka thought, mentally mapping out the route he’d have to take on bike to avoid the highway. They’d moved since that first tiny house, close to the beach. It would take hours, now, without a car.

Once, Katara had buried him up to his neck, and he hadn’t been able to get out for hours, even when she stopped crying and started trying to dig him back out. They hadn’t come back to the beach unsupervised after that, even though he never told on her.

He thought about what it would feel like now to be buried in the sand. He didn’t think he’d notice.

Zuko never used to look at him, not in a way that meant anything. That was okay, that was breathing room. Sokka liked to breathe.

Zuko never used to look at him, and then one day Sokka had done something very stupid, and Zuko had started _looking_ and he hadn’t stopped. Sokka let him, and it was like he was on fire, and he loved it, and he hated it.

“Stop.”

Zuko blinked. “What?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

Zuko frowned. Didn’t look away. “Like how?”

Sokka’s skin prickled. He twisted his fingers into the sand. “Like you know something I don’t.” _Like you know who I am_.

“I know lots of things you don’t. Would you like an itemised list?”

“You’re hilarious.” He put his hands, sandy, into his lap and resisted the urge to scratch at his skin.

Zuko kept looking at him. Sokka made a choice.

He looked back.

Finally, Zuko said, “Your phone is ringing.”

“Huh?”

“Your phone. Someone’s calling you.”

And someone was. He wiped his hands on his jeans and fished his phone out of his pocket. Probably it was just his dad to find out if he was coming home for dinner.

It was not his dad.

“Katara?”

“Okay don’t panic.”

“Katara,” he said.

“Gyatso texted Aang.”

“Is everything okay?”

Zuko frowned at him, so Sokka flicked sand at his shoes.

“Yeah. No. I don’t know, Gyatso said it was an emergency so Aang had to bounce…”

Zuko moved to scoop sand into Sokka’s lap, but Sokka grabbed his wrist to stop him. Sand trickled through Zuko’s fingers. Sokka didn’t let go.

“Wait, you’re alone?”

“Um. Yes.”

“ _Katara_. Lead with that!” He scrambled to his feet, dragging Zuko with him. “I’m twenty minutes away.” He looked at the sky. It was going to be close to dark in twenty minutes. “In the car. Is that okay?”

“Totally,” Katara said, and anyone else in the world would have believed her. “It’s a five-minute drive.”

“Katara.”

“Sokka.”

“Okay, okay. Twenty minutes. Call Gran Gran to keep you company.”

She hung up on him.

He was still holding Zuko’s wrist, and he didn’t know how to stop in a way that wasn’t mean, that wasn’t conspicuous. “We’ve got to go get Katara. I can take you home after.”

Zuko twisted his wrist around so that he could take Sokka’s hand and squeeze it. “It’s okay. Let’s go.” And he dropped Sokka’s hand and climbed into the passenger seat.

At the last traffic light before the skatepark, Sokka gripped the wheel tight and turned to Zuko. “Have you ever… have you ever been in a car with my sister?”

Zuko considered, and then shook his head.

“Yeah,” Sokka sighed. “Okay, um. Katara… Katara doesn’t do well in cars. Um. Just be… I don’t know. Just try not to make it worse.”

Zuko, for half a second, was very obviously offended, but his face cleared and just like that and he was the version of Zuko Sokka wished actually existed: easy-going, happy, calm. Not that Zuko wasn’t, at times, any of these things. Just not all three at once. He saw right through it, but Katara probably wouldn’t.

He hoped that she wouldn’t.

When he pulled into the parking lot, it took him a minute to spot Katara sitting on the edge of the halfpipe, and his heart rate climbed as he thought about her walking down the streets alone in the dark. But there she was, right on the edge of the light cast by the flood lamps. When she saw him, she leapt to her feet and launched herself toward him. She stopped just before she reached him, before she bowled him over, and wrapped her arms around his elbow. “Gran Gran’s making fish fry for dinner.”

“Oh, nice,” he said, leading her to the car, taking one of her hands and winding their fingers together.

“Oh,” she said, stopping outside the passenger door. “Zuko’s here?” she asked as the door opened.

“Yeah.”

“Right. I thought you weren’t—” She cut herself off, shaking her head. He didn’t know if she knew she was squeezing his hand as tightly as she was, so he didn’t say anything.

Zuko looked between them, wary. “Hey, Katara. Do you want to sit in the front?”

“No, that’s okay,” she lied. Sokka frowned at her. “I can sit in the back.”

“Katara…”

She squeezed his hand once more and dropped it. Zuko, for maybe the first time all day, was resolutely not looking at him. _Chill out_ , he thought. _Please. Be normal, for fuck’s sake._

When Katara was settled in the back with her seatbelt securely fastened, Sokka slid into the driver’s seat, and tried to covertly pinch Zuko to get him to relax again.

“Alright,” he said, when Zuko swatted him away. “We all good?”

“Drive the car, Sokka,” Katara said, and when he caught her eye in the rear-view mirror, her lips were pressed into a tight line.

He was hyperaware of Zuko next to him, of Zuko’s fingers drumming softly on the centre console. Every hair on his body was standing up straight. _Eyes on the road. Eyes on the road. Eyes on the road_. He wanted badly to glance in the mirror again, to check on his sister, but it would be a disaster if she caught him at it.

Eyes on the road.

Look way for a second, just a second and—

Eyes. On. The road.

Zuko made a soft noise, and in his periphery Sokka saw him shift in his seat, but he couldn’t look. Eyes on the road.

“Katara?” Zuko asked, softly, gently. Then he hummed, and Sokka didn’t think it was a surprised sound. It was more like – it was like when he slept over and Sokka woke in the night and reached over to make sure he was still there. Deep and grounded. _I’m here_.

Eyes on the road.

He thought he saw Zuko lean through the gap between their seats, thought he felt Zuko’s hair brush across his arm. He thought a lot of things.

“Sokka,” Zuko said, somewhere behind him. Firm, quiet. “Pull over.”

Sokka pulled over.

Katara was shaking in the back seat, gripping Zuko’s left hand between both of hers tight enough that his fingertips were purpling.

Sokka’s stomach dropped to his toes. “Hey,” he said, and Katara looked at him, eyes wide.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “It’s fine, we’re almost – we’re almost there.”

“Hey, no,” Sokka said. He wanted to climb between the seats and wrap her in a hug, but Zuko was still wedged in that gap. “Katara, it’s not worth it. We’ll get out and walk.”

“You can’t leave the car here! What if a bus comes?”

“I’ll walk with you,” Zuko said. He looked over his shoulder as he said it, like he was asking permission, like he was trying to assure Sokka he was up to the task. He turned back to Katara. “If you want the company.”

Katara had not let go of his hand, and it didn’t escape Sokka’s notice that she wasn’t shaking nearly as badly as he had seen before. Zuko. _Zuko?_ His Zuko, who could be counted on to say the wrong thing like the tide could be counted on to come in after it went out? Zuko was calming Katara down better that he had been able to in years?

Sokka knew that he was as big of a cause of this specific anxiety of Katara’s as the car itself was, and he knew that it wasn’t his _fault_ that he caused that anxiety, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to accept that he couldn’t help her. He unclenched his jaw and tried to let go of the jealousy brewing in his chest.

Zuko undid his seatbelt and climbed into the back seat still holding Katara’s hand, and he didn’t let go even as he opened the door onto the curb and climbed out. Katara followed with a single glance at Sokka, and she wasn’t worried. She wasn’t asking him to get her out of this. After all, she had taken Zuko’s hand from the centre console, and she wasn’t worried about being in this state alone with him.

Sokka didn’t know how he felt about any of it.

He wanted to dream.

He didn’t go inside when he got home, sitting instead on the stoop to wait for Zuko and Katara. He was sure his dad and Gran Gran had heard the car and knew he was out here, but he didn’t really feel like explaining what had happened. How did he say _Zuko did what I couldn’t_? How did he say _I trusted him, untested, with my sister at her most vulnerable_?

He heard Katara’s laugh before he saw them emerge from the dark, and he burned at the way they leaned into each other, at the way it seemed like Katara had never even had an episode. Zuko looked at him, _looked at him looked at him looked at him_

“Are you staying for dinner?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” Zuko said.

“But.”

“But,” Zuko agreed. “I should get home to Uncle.”

When Katara had given Zuko a hug and promised to tell Dad and Gran Gran that he would be back in time for dinner, Sokka slid back into the car. He wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, felt the stitches in the leather, tried to commit the feeling to memory.

Zuko closed the passenger door softly, and the space between them was charged.

“I really hate you sometimes,” Sokka said, and started the engine.

Zuko took this without a word, and it wasn’t fair. Sokka felt like his lungs were being slowly ripped out of his chest and suddenly Zuko was the cool one, the sure one.

He thought about how Zuko’s skin had tasted beneath his lips. _Would I dream of you?_

He stopped the car a few blocks away from Iroh’s apartment. Zuko didn’t act as though he was surprised by this. “Katara didn’t tell me,” he said. “Whatever it is that happened to her, she didn’t tell me about it. If you were worried about that.”

“Worried about that?” Sokka echoed. “I’m not—”

“If I was supposed to know, you would have told me already,” Zuko said. “And that’s fine.”

“It’s not a secret,” Sokka said, but now that it was time to follow through on that, he found he couldn’t. He knew so much about Zuko, but Zuko had never asked about him. He’d never wanted to be asked. Instead, he said, “Did you know I don’t dream?”

Zuko blinked. “You don’t dream?”

“When we were kids, I was in a coma for, like, a month. Head injury. The doctor said that probably had something to do with it, but I always thought – a whole month asleep, I used them all up.”

“Used up all your dreams?”

“Yeah.”

Zuko was silent. Sokka ached to touch him, to feel him alive beneath his skin, but he didn’t. Touching Zuko had caused him enough problems lately.

“Suki says,” Sokka whispered, and something changed in the air, “that you can’t know what you really want if you can’t dream. It’s your heart’s way of telling your brain what’s up.”

“And you can’t dream.”

“And I can’t dream.”

Zuko fidgeted with the cuff of his shirt, buttoned it and unbuttoned it, over and over. “A coma, huh?”

“Yeah. I missed all the fun.”

Zuko looked at him, then, eyes searching his face for the joke. He wasn’t telling a joke.

He hummed. “The car flipped four times.”

“Jesus Christ,” Zuko said.

“I don’t remember it.”

He was late, now. Should have dropped Zuko off and been back home already. He looked away from the clock on the dashboard, but there was nowhere else to look that wasn’t at Zuko.

“But.”

“But,” Sokka agreed.

“Katara does.”

“Katara does.”

“Sokka…”

“I don’t know what to do,” Sokka said. “About you. I don’t know what to do with all of this.”

“All of this?”

“Please don’t act stupid.”

Zuko folded his arms. “Okay.”

“Suki broke up with me because I didn’t dream about her. How am I supposed to know if you’re right – if you’re a right decision?” His voice cracked and he realised, belatedly, that he was about to start crying.

Zuko took his hand gently, wrapped it up tight. “Suki didn’t break up with you because you didn’t dream about her. That’s dumb, even for you. She broke up with you because you’re her best friend and the other part just wasn’t working.”

Sokka sniffed. “How do you know that?”

Zuko rolled his eyes. Squeezed Sokka’s hand and let him go. “Because you’re _my_ best friend too. I lived through it. I know what happened.”

“I don’t dream about you,” Sokka insisted.

“So?”

 _I don’t want to get it wrong again. I can’t get it wrong again_. He didn’t say anything.

Zuko rested his hand on the handle of his door but didn’t make a further move to get out. Sokka wanted him to leave, desperately, wanted him to give the conversation a reason to end. Why had he done this? Why had he said anything?

Zuko’s fingers, pale and long and delicate, fingernails manicured and perfect, traced the doorhandle idly, and Sokka couldn’t look away. He had held that hand in his so many times, when it was freezing and when it was sweaty, when it was dirty and when it was clean, when it was gloved and when it was bare.

He wanted to wind their fingers together, and he wanted to chop his hands off so he could never be tempted again.

He was in agony. He was being crushed by the earth.

“You said,” Zuko said slowly, “that you weren’t ready. Are you ready?”

“No.”

Zuko closed his eyes and smiled to himself. “Okay then,” and he got out of the car.

Dad was waiting for him when he got home.

“Katara and Gran Gran already ate,” he said. “Katara was very tired.”

It was an invitation to tell him what had happened, but Sokka declined, and that was allowed.

They ate on the couch, something they never did except when someone was feeling especially awful. Sokka wondered if it was him or Dad who was supposed to be being comforted. When they were finished, Sokka thought he hadn’t spoken a single word, though his dad had tried to start a conversation a couple of times.

When Sokka stood to take their plates to the kitchen, Hakoda said, “I think you are an exceptional young man.”

“Dad.”

“No, I mean that. I know that things are very hard for you, sometimes. For both of you. Especially right now. So I hope you know how proud of you I am.”

Sokka stared at the wall. The kitchen was so close and so impossibly out of reach. “Yeah, I know.”

“Okay then.”

He woke up early, way earlier than he needed to, because he’d crawled into bed straight after dinner. There were no messages on his phone. No missed calls. He wondered what Zuko was doing, what Zuko was thinking. He hated himself for what he said last night, hated himself for leading Zuko on again and again. Hated himself for wanting.

He typed out: _it was a lie. i don’t ever hate you_

He didn’t send it. He never sent it.

When he came out of the shower, Katara was curled up in his bed, tucked up to her chin. “Volleyball?” she asked.

“Last one.”

“We should go to the beach more this summer,” she said, wiggling deeper under the covers.

“Yeah?”

“I miss the ocean,” she said, like she said every year. Maybe this year would be the one they actually followed through.

Sokka pulled on his gym shirt and sat on the edge of the bed to dry his hair.

“I didn’t know Zuko could be that… agreeable,” Katara said softly.

Sokka didn’t look at her. “Yeah, neither did I.”

He didn’t look at her as he laced up his shoes, didn’t look at her as he packed up his gym bag, didn’t look at her as he hung his towel on the back of his door. “Let’s watch a movie when I get home,” he said.

“That sounds nice.”

Yeah, he thought. _That sounds nice._

He was early. Like, ridiculously early. He supposed he could pull back out of the parking lot and drive around town for an hour. He could call Zuko to hang out for a while.

He didn’t want to see Zuko. He maybe never wanted to see Zuko ever again. 

He parked around the back of the rec centre and stared at the mural that had been painted there by the ’77 team after they had won the regional volleyball championship. First incarnation of the Rough Rhinos to do it. Last incarnation to do it.

He’d always kind of hated that mural, a half-clever half-moronic attempt at an ode to _The Creation of Adam_ with two players reaching for a volleyball over the net. It had always come across as a little too smug to him, but now he looked at it and saw himself. Reaching, being reached for. Untouchable, desperate to be touched. Caught between two sides. Always in limbo.

He preferred the stoner graffiti around the corner.

He sat there until Suki texted to ask where he was. _running late_ , he texted back, and slowly gathered his gear from the back seat. The whole team paused in their warm-up stretches to stare at him when he walked in, and he didn’t meet a single one of their eyes. He felt raw. He felt see-through.

Suki moved over to stand next to him as he dropped his bag and started stretching, but he didn’t greet her, and she didn’t greet him.

Their last game had been on Friday, and though they hadn’t topped the league table overall, they _had_ won that game, so the atmosphere was light and bright when Chan split them into pairs for a round-robin friendly. Usually, Sokka tried to make sure Suki was his partner, but he didn’t argue with Chan when he put him with Haru, because he knew Haru would only want to talk to him about strategy.

It wasn’t that he was avoiding Suki, and it wasn’t that he didn’t want to hang out with her. It was that if he was standing next to her, she would want to _chat_ , and, for maybe the first time in his life, Sokka just wasn’t up to chatting. He couldn’t… he just couldn’t shake the Zuko thing, as much as he was trying. Maybe that was because he didn’t really _want_ to shake it, but living in limbo was killing him. It was a decision he was willing to make for his own good.

It was a decision he was trying to make for his own good.

He and Haru made a cohesive enough team, and they won their first match fairly comfortably. When Chan blew the whistle, Haru high fived him, and went off on his own for a drink of water without saying a word to Sokka. It was exactly what Sokka wanted him to do.

Round two was more of a challenge. It was them against Suki and Ty Lee, and Sokka had exactly zero illusions about their chances of winning. The way he saw it, the only way they could possibly pull it off was if the matches on either side of them derailed completely and the girls were knocked out in a twin strike from rogue volleyballs. Unlikely, but not technically impossible. He tried to convey this to Haru with only his eyes, but Haru just shrugged at him and got ready to serve.

They lasted approximately four minutes before Sokka found himself flat on his back without really knowing how he got there.

“Oh my _god_ , Sokka,” Ty Lee was shrieking, “I’m so sorry! Please don’t hate me!”

“Why would I hate you?” he asked, pushing himself onto his elbows, and _oh_. Blood gushed from his nose down his chin, and _that_ was why.

Suki was there with a tissue so fast that she must have had it in her pocket, and she held his head still while she wiped his face.

“Ow,” he said, more about the way she had his neck in a vice than the nose.

“Yeah, I bet,” Suki said. “Can someone go get some ice?”

“I’ll go,” Haru said.

Still holding the tissue, Suki hauled Sokka to his feet and they hobbled, dizzy, into the locker room. Ty Lee hovered at Suki’s shoulder until one of the other girls led her away to hyperventilate in a different room. Sokka’s nose was starting to throb in earnest now, so he couldn’t say that he was exactly upset by this. He’d make sure she knew he wasn’t mad _after_ he stopped dripping.

Suki pushed one of the benches back against a wall of lockers with her foot, and manoeuvred him down until he was leaning back with his head slightly bowed.

He was settling in for a mini nap while he waited for his nose to clear up when the door opened and Suki said, “Perfect, thanks.”

“Yo, Sokka, man, you okay?” asked Chan, passing Suki a new wad of paper towels and dropping onto the bench on Sokka’s other side.

Sokka turned his head slowly so that Suki didn’t drop the new paper towel she was pressing into his nose, and gave him a thumbs up.

“Hey,” Suki said, “hold this here and make sure he doesn’t tip his head back. I’m going to go see what’s taking Haru so long.”

Chan took over paper towel duty, and Suki slipped out. “You can’t do this yourself?”

“She doesn’t trust me.” He didn’t say that she was right to not trust him. Last time she’d turned her back on him with a bloody nose, he’d forgotten, leaned back, and ended up spending the night coughing up all the blood he’d swallowed. _Not_ fun.

“Hey, I keep forgetting to ask,” Chan said, suddenly, turning Sokka’s head back so he could look him in the eye, “whatever happened with that dude at my party? Was it Zuko? Kind of looked like him and I always thought he was a bit… you know. You guys are buddies, right?”

It was hard for Sokka to speak anyway, with Chan’s hand tight at the bottom of his skull, paper towel mashed into his face. “Um.”

“Totally happy for you, dude. And for him, I guess. Looked pretty intense.”

“What looked pretty intense?” Suki asked from the doorway.

“The shot that wiped him,” Chan said, and Sokka tried not to look at him in surprise. “I always forget how wicked Ty Lee’s spikes can be.”

“Me too,” said Sokka. “Clearly.”

Chan laughed at that, and when Suki took the bloody paper towel away to replace it with a new one and the ice, he clapped Sokka on the shoulder and left the locker room to wrap up practice.

“Chan saw you and Zuko getting _pretty intense_?” Suki asked. “And I haven’t heard about this because…?”

“It wasn’t real. It didn’t matter. We were gonna get busted for snooping.”

“Sokka,” she said gently, “you are so stupid. You _kissed him_?”

He looked at her around the ice pack. “Not on the _lips_.”

“Babe.”

“ _Babe_.”

“Fine,” she said.

The thing about Suki was that she had dated him and then when they’d broken up they’d gone back to exactly how they were before, and for her, that would probably be the case for every relationship she ever entered into for the rest of her life. It was just how she was: personable, wicked cool, chill. She didn’t ruminate on awkwardness; she didn’t even leave room for awkwardness.

Zuko was _not_ like that. Sokka was pretty sure if Zuko ever really dated someone and broke up with them, he’d never be able to meet their eye again. That wasn’t a slam on Zuko, either. Sokka wasn’t convinced _he_ had the amount of chill to smooth over a post-breakup return to friendship. That had been _all_ Suki.

So it was just… it was complicated. It was so complicated. Before he’d called Zuko from a pay phone and they’d laid in the night air alone with the stars, he hadn’t even known complicated had existed. Not like this. Not like he was paralysed.

It was like this:

Zuko was his best friend. He couldn’t separate his time since moving here into pre Zuko and post Zuko. He couldn’t imagine… no, he couldn’t _stomach_ the thought of not having him there, couldn’t stomach the thought of passing each other on the street, ghosts, not meeting each other’s eyes.

It was like this:

Sometimes he wanted it, so, so much.

He couldn’t quantify that _want_. Every time he sat down to try to set his feelings in order, the ocean floor dropped out and he was adrift. He couldn’t cross that threshold. He couldn’t jump from that cliff.

In April 1961, Yuri Gagarin was the first man launched into space. No precedent. No fallback. Either he was the first man to leave the planet, or he was dead. On the twelfth of April, he must have been the bravest man on Earth. On the eleventh, Sokka thought, he must have been the most terrified.

He wasn’t Yuri Gagarin. He couldn’t walk into Vostok 1 and see it through. He couldn’t take that leap of faith.

It was like this:

He was scared to give up his friendship with Zuko.

He and Suki sat in their silence until his nose had stopped bleeding, and then she led him to the basins to clean his face and assess the damage. It was tender, but they agreed that it wasn’t broken, thank god. Jury was out on how severe the bruise was going to be, but at least he could put Ty Lee’s mind at ease.

She was by his side as soon as the rest of the team entered the locker room, and grasped his hand tightly.

“Hey,” he said, ignoring how gross his mouth now tasted, “don’t even worry about it. Remember the time Zuko reamed me in the face with that basketball? This isn’t even a tenth of that. I’m good, really. You didn’t even break it.”

She looked at him with shining eyes, and when she decided he wasn’t lying to make her feel better, her face split into a huge grin. “Not even a teeny tiny concussion?”

“Nope.”

“Hm. I’ll have to work on that over the summer.” And she wrapped her arms around his waist, and she flitted off to pack up her locker.

The end of season speeches passed, Sokka assumed, pretty similarly to the way they had last year, and the year before; he could feel his heartbeat in his nose, and it was pretty distracting. He looked up only when Suki poked him in the side, and everyone laughed at him, so he assumed it was the annual joke about him zoning out on court.

“Thank you, Rhinos, for a truly memorable season,” Chan said. “I’m going to miss playing with you all so much. It may not have been a perfect last practice, but it was definitely one I feel represented us. So now, before we leave, I would like to introduce you to next year’s captain… Suki Ito!”

Sokka clapped for her, for his best friend, though he was already dreading her impending reign of terror. “Thank you, thank you!” she said, standing up and bowing gracefully. “Enjoy your two weeks off – we’re starting early next season!”

The applause dried up.

“Just kidding!” she laughed, and the team laughed with her. Sokka did not believe that she was kidding. He could already picture himself being the guinea pig for all the cruel and unusual methods of training she’d been brewing up since they joined the team. It was going to be a long summer.

“Okay, break up barbecue at Sokka’s house next Saturday,” Chan said, clapping his hands to bring their attention back. “See you all then!”

Sokka waited until almost everyone had cleared out, smiling at everyone who smiled at him, shaking hands with whoever offered them. Suki examined his nose one last time, and offered to drive him home.

“I’m already taking Ty Lee – your house is on my way.”

“I’m fine,” he told her, putting his phone in his bag and zipping it up. “I’m not even dizzy anymore. Besides, I need the car in the morning. I’m totally fine, I promise.”

She frowned, and then she let it go. “Okay. We’re still on for lunch tomorrow?”

“Definitely.”

She punched him lightly in the shoulder, and together they left the rec centre. Ty Lee was waiting for Suki on the hood of her car, chatting animatedly with

Zuko.

Sokka met his eye, and it knocked the wind from his lungs. He thought, _I’m so stupid._ How could he ever have thought he didn’t want to see Zuko?

Zuko raised his hand in a little wave, and that abyss stretched out between them. Sokka followed Suki across the parking lot. Had it been the need to _know_ that had driven Yuri Gagarin into the stars?

Zuko smiled his hard-won smile. Was the need to _know_ enough? 

There was so much universe out there, and the human race would never be able to explore it all, so was it better to stay here? To stay where it was safe? To live, dreamless?

He and Suki reached the car, and then he reached for Zuko’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> hi! jumping straight in where we left off with contact high:
> 
> 1) there is a light that never goes out was my #3 most listened to song on spotify, so that's. yeah that happened
> 
> 2) some new companion songs to listen to with this! obligatory smiths song: please, please, please let me get what i want / title song: instant crush by daft punk feat julian casablancas / series title song: run by bts 
> 
> 3) hugest love and gratitude to my two forever girls haley and rhi. you are both so integral to my writing and to my emotional well-being. i would be lost without you. 
> 
> 4) i don't have any more ideas for smiths songs that would inform this au and i don't have a lot more energy to put into it i don't think. that being said, if someone were to.........engage with me and get me thinking about things by asking questions.......... who knows what might happen ;) 
> 
> find me at [rippeduncleiroh](https://rippeduncleiroh.tumblr.com/) on tumblr
> 
> happy new year 💜


End file.
